If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Every country has the government it deserves.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.